Science

Psilocybin helped doctors and nurses who worked through the pandemic

Researchers ran a double-blind, randomized trial in Washington State from February-December 2022. Their study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on December 5, 2024. This randomized clinical trial found that psilocybin therapy resulted in a significant, sustained reduction in symptoms of depression experienced by clinicians after frontline work during the…

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Politics

Psilocybin in Oregon may help address fears of death, but… access…

John was among tens of thousands of Oregonians whose conditions may prevent them from traveling to service centers… few downsides to creating more avenues for people to access psilocybin, like allowing for use at home or in hospice centers. …a federal lawsuit against the Oregon Health Authority, alleging the agency’s psilocybin services program violates the…

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Science

The first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of psychedelics [was] published in 2012… 

[In December 2024]; a [new] synergistic, multi-level understanding of psychedelics; a novel, synergistic understanding of psychedelics arising from systematic reviews and meta-analyses of three hierarchical levels of analysis: (1) subjective experience (phenomenology), (2) neuroimaging and (3) molecular pharmacology. The Altered States of Consciousness (ASC) scale is one popular questionnaire that captures several of these subjective…

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Medicine/Healing

VA funds first study on psychedelic-assisted therapy for Veterans

…the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced that it will fund a study on Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted, or MDMA-assisted, therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder and alcohol use disorder among Veterans. This is the first VA-funded study for psychedelic-assisted therapy since the 1960s. The study is scheduled to take place at the Providence VA Medical Center in Rhode…

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Biography/Memoir

…Oregon’s ‘first legal psilocybin concert’

…two dozen participants will take a relatively low dose of psilocybin, kick back and listen to a DJ. Traphagen is excited about the possibility for group experiences like this to reach more people compared to one-on-one sessions between a client and a facilitator. “In this model, we’re going to be able to give mushrooms to…

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Biography/Memoir

…Oregon… psychedelic mushroom…

Oregon became first in the nation to legalize the therapeutic use of psilocybin, the compound found in psychedelic mushrooms. “The cost for the program has been astronomical and is not accessible to people across the socioeconomic spectrum,” MJ Wilt, who just opened a licensed center in the Portland suburb of Gresham, spent tens of thousands…

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Politics

People; …eating huge doses of magic mushrooms live on social media

“After decades of drug war propaganda demonizing psychedelics, the narrative has swung to the opposite extreme, with increasing claims that they’re among the safest drugs one can take,” says Dr Manesh Girn, a neuroscientist specializing in psychedelics at the University of California. …at no point in recent history has the use of psychedelics felt so…

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Biography/Memoir

Mexican cartel leader who faked own death… in U.S. is arrested in California, feds say

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Cristian Fernando Gutierrez-Ochoa “allegedly faked his own death and assumed a false identity…” According to court documents, Gutierrez-Ochoa began working for the Jalisco cartel in 2014 and coordinated the shipment of 40,000 kilograms (88,000 pounds) of methamphetamine and 2,000 kilograms of cocaine from Mexico to the United States. The…

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Medicine/Healing

FDA gives long awaited green light to veterans cannabis trial for PTSD

The FDA is permitting a large cohort of American veterans to smoke medical cannabis in a study aimed at gaining insights for combatting PTSD. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has been pushing for this since 2021. The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, announced… that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)…

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